


This Is The Air We Breathe (but somehow it hits me differently)

by vulcanhighblood



Series: The Vampire Homeroom Teacher [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Discord: Umino Hours, Friendship, Gen, Kamizuki Izumo is a Good Friend, Light Angst, Umino Hours Winter Bingo, Umino Iruka Needs a Hug, Vampire Umino Iruka, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28912446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcanhighblood/pseuds/vulcanhighblood
Summary: As a recently-turned vampire, Iruka struggles with the realities of his condition: namely, a lack of natural body heat.
Relationships: Kamizuki Izumo & Umino Iruka
Series: The Vampire Homeroom Teacher [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984759
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18
Collections: The Umino Hours Winter Bingo 2020





	This Is The Air We Breathe (but somehow it hits me differently)

**Author's Note:**

> My second work in the Umino Hours Discord Server's Winter Bingo  
> Written for the prompt: Cold Morning

Inhale. Grimace. Exhale. Grimace again. Iruka flexed his fingers, stiff with cold, and scowled at them. The morning came with frost crystals coating the soft grass in the clearing around him, and to his great chagrin, had also coated  _ him, _ too. He was absolutely  _ freezing, _ and the worst part of it was that he didn’t know how to improve his situation. He’d used the last of his hand-warmers the day before, because it wasn’t really expected that he’d suffer from extreme weather conditions, and technically speaking he wasn’t, not really. He still moved fine, he still had all of his senses in top condition, and his undead heart beat slow and steady in his chest, inky black blood sluggishly travelling through his veins. The problem was, Iruka didn’t  _ like _ being cold, and it turned out that vampires didn’t produce much body heat. In fact, it turned out that vampires were  _ so bad _ at producing warmth that when they were on watch while the rest of the mission squad slept,  _ frost _ would coat the vampire’s still form. 

Iruka exhaled again, scowling at the fact that his breath wasn’t visible despite the subzero temperatures. He’d tried blowing on his hands to warm them - but it wasn’t enough. He’d given most of his hand warmers away to his fellow shinobi, as they’d been delayed on their return by several days and  _ technically, _ he didn’t need to be warm as he had already died once, and wasn’t susceptible to hypothermia.

Well. He didn’t  _ think _ he was susceptible, anyway. There was precious little data regarding the weaknesses of vampires, and Iruka was a clanless vampire, with no sire or other vampire brethren to teach him about what vampires could and couldn’t do. So he was learning the hard way that vampires could function as living ice sculptures, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable. The worst part of it was he couldn’t even warm up in the sunlight for fear of burning! It was totally unfair. Though he wasn’t going to deprive his teammates of the much-needed heat, he wished he could warm up. They were going on day 4, finally reaching the borders of the Land of Snow, and Iruka couldn’t  _ wait _ to get back to Konoha and warm up with a giant bowl of Ichiraku’s garlic-free ramen. For that matter, he’d kill for a hot springs detour, anything to warm his limbs that ached with a cold that should have been killing him, were he not undead.

Despite the fact that his body functioned perfectly fine without being warm, he  _ wanted _ to be warm. Flexing his fingers, Iruka cupped them over his mouth and puffed into them. It didn’t do anything, except make his fingers feel even colder, the air from his mouth passing over them like a chilly breeze. It turned out that gloves didn’t keep your fingers very warm if the body they belonged to didn’t have a natural way of heating itself. Iruka’s body was, in a sense, dead, and thus had no need for heat. The only foolproof way he’d found to heat himself up was friction, which still worked, but meant that he had to keep moving constantly. Rubbing his hands together, Iruka managed to work a bit of warmth back into his hands, but the biting cold stole it away almost as soon as he stopped. What he wouldn’t give for a hot meal, or even a cup of tea! But all of his team was equally exhausted and desperate for a hot meal, and none of them would be getting it until they reached the Land of Fire’s borders - at  _ best. _

Biting his lip, Iruka shifted a little as he spotted the sky overhead beginning to brighten. Based on his calculations, he was sitting in a shadowed area and wouldn’t be burned by the rising sun, but this moment always made him nervous when he sat watch. As the sun tipped over the horizon, Iruka breathed a sigh of relief. He  _ was _ in the shade, and wouldn’t need to rely on any more blood to carry him through the day. He’d already needed to drink more blood than he was strictly comfortable with, but that was often the case when he went on long-term missions. Blood from Konoha Hospital was pricey, and he didn’t like using more than was absolutely necessary, especially since C-rank mission pay wasn’t exactly leaving him rolling in wealth. 

A moment later, he heard one of his teammates roll to their feet, shudder, and step away to relieve themselves. When they returned, rather than crawling back into their bedroll, they plopped down beside Iruka. He turned to see who it was, and met Izumo’s gaze and lopsided grin. 

“Hey,” he said, nudging Iruka’s shoulder in a friendly sort of way. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going,” Iruka replied vaguely. He’d been stuck on watch duty for the entire mission, since he’d made the mistake of admitting that he didn’t really  _ need _ to sleep all that often. Which was true, his vampire body didn’t need sleep. His mind, however, could really used the time to sort through things and get a bit of a rest. He didn’t need it physically, but mentally and emotionally, sleep was still important. Ah well. Iruka would sleep when he got back to Konoha. Right after that bowl of ramen.

“Sunrise looks pretty,” Izumo commented, peeking through the branches of the tree they were seated under. 

“Hm,” Iruka said, glancing that way briefly. The sun represented more of a threat than a thing of beauty these days, but he wasn’t going to ruin someone else’s enjoyment of it.

Izumo shivered, crossing his arms over his chest and chafing them to try and warm himself. “It’s cold,” he said.

Iruka snorted a little. “Tell me about it,” he said. “I had to knock the frost off again today.”

Izumo frowned in confusion. “The frost?”

Iruka pointed to his clothes, still stiff with the tiny flecks of frozen condensation. “I frost over most nights.”

“That sounds… not fun,” Izumo offered after a moment, then tilted over to lean his head against Iruka’s shoulder. He hissed, sitting up a moment later, rubbing his cheek. “What the hell, you’re  _ freezing!” _

Iruka resisted the urge to roll his eyes, gesturing to his frost-crusted legs and torso. “What did you expect?”

“If I lick you, would my tongue freeze to you?” Izumo demanded, “Like a pole?”

Iruka fixed him with a look that said  _ If you try it you’ll lose your tongue. _

Lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender, Izumo chuckled. “Fine, fine. But seriously, aren’t you cold?”

“Freezing,” Iruka confessed. “I can’t stay warm.”

“I know what you mean,” Izumo agreed, once more wrapping his arms around himself and shivering. “It’s so cold out here, it’s so hard to warm up once you get chilled.”

Iruka bit his lip, considering his response. “No, I mean I physically can’t stay warm.”

Izumo blinked at Iruka, his breath slowly escaping into the air as he did so, the cloud of steam marking his breath as that of a  _ living thing. _ “What do you mean?”

In response, Iruka tilted his head back and exhaled for several long seconds. His breath wasn't even a little visible. “I mean, I’m not warm,” he explained, turning back to Izumo. “I literally can’t stay warm. My body doesn’t … do that. Anymore.” He was ashamed to feel his eyes prickle with emotion as he explained - he hadn’t really thought it was a problem, but now that he was talking about it he realized how much he missed the little things about being human - being able to see himself in a mirror, eating garlic, being able to sneak into places  _ uninvited… _ And warmth. He missed being warm so much it ached in his chest, and he was pretty sure that it was an emotional ache, and not the ache of his lungs freezing over.

Pretty sure. Not 100% certain, though. Because he didn’t have any other vampires to explain these things to him. 

Izumo gazed at Iruka with a sympathetic look in his eyes. “Well,” he said, reaching over and clasping one of Iruka’s hands in his, chafing it lightly, “Why didn’t you just say so? We could have… I dunno, lit a fire or something.”

“It’s fine,” Iruka said quickly, even though his voice cracked in a way that made Izumo look at him with skepticism in his dark eyes.

He didn’t say anything though, just picking up Iruka’s other hand and trying to warm it, too. They sat there in the shadows, watching the sun slowly creep over the horizon until the rest of their squad had woken and broken camp. 

Then they stood, stretching, and decided who would lead the squad on the final leg of their journey back to Konoha. While they were discussing, Izumo casually crouched down, pulling out a small parrafin-and-cotton stuffed portable fire-tin from his survival pack, lighting it, and placing a small canteen over it while the rest of the group decided who would take point. His little fire burned out right as the rest of the team had finished gearing up, and Izumo wandered back over to Iruka, handing him the canteen. 

“Here,” he said with a soft smile, passing it to Iruka. “It’s not tea, but it’ll warm you up a little.”

Iruka accepted the canteen, popping the lid open and taking a quick sip. It wasn’t hot, the fire hadn’t been big enough or applied long enough to boil the water, but it was  _ warm, _ and Iruka hadn’t had anything truly warm in  _ days. _ After taking a few sips, he drew the canteen back and exhaled. Warm air escaped his lips, the heat carrying his breath aloft. For the second time that morning his eyes prickled with emotion, but this time it was something like relief. In that fleeting moment, Iruka felt like he’d managed to recapture just a tiny bit of his humanity, and he wanted to cling to it like a child to his mother’s skirts.

Taking another sip of the warm water, Iruka exhaled a second time, watching his breath dissipate into the air around them and taking a shaky breath before turning to Izumo, who grinned back at him.

“We’ll be back soon,” Izumo said softly. “Then maybe we can grab something hot to eat to celebrate the completed mission?”

Iruka smiled, the warmth now radiating through him having little to do with the water he’d consumed. “How does ramen sound?”

Izumo’s smile widened into a full grin as he hoisted his mission pack over one shoulder and turned to face home, casting one more glance over his shoulder at Iruka. “Sounds perfect.”

Iruka couldn’t agree more.

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhh I basically ended up finding out ways to sneak some little extra snippets into already existing AUs and this was the second one I ended up doing. It's kind of hilarious that it took me so long to write my second fic, but it's crunchtime and while I'm not sure if I'll actually get a bingo I'm at least going to try and write more than two fics for this event because I got some great prompts.
> 
> Thanks as always to the lovelies on the Umino Hours discord server who have coordinated this event and been so encouraging to me as I sort of flounder my way through this winter season!


End file.
